[Neurons] 2010 Meta Reflections #44

[L. Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

Meta Reflections 2010 - #44

September 11, 2010

                        

 

A STRATEGY FOR DEFEATING

BOOK BURNING 

 

 

Unless you have been lost in the wilderness for the last week, you have
heard about Terry Jones the pastor of the very small church in Florida who
somewhere got the idea that burning the Korean would be a good idea and
instead of letting that fleeting thought pass, he decided to act on it.  Now
normally this would not have been a problem because it would have been
contained in his little community.  No one would have heard of it.  No one
would have made much of it.

 

With the hundreds of thousands of Christian pastors all over the planet
doing things every single week, almost none of it is ever considered
newsworthy.   And they actually do lots of good things -from helping the
poor, visiting the sick, providing inspiration for people who and down and
discouraged and so on.  But none of that hits the news.  None of that is
considered newsworthy!

 

But just let some not-so-bright pastor talk about burning a book, and
presto, News-Worthiness! of such a high degree that every radio station and
every television station and every cable outlet, and every blog and internet
website carries it.  And why have we heard so much about Terry Jones?  Well,
it's obvious, the News Media think they can make money that way, fan a
controversy, and get new readers or viewers.  And of course, they then take
no responsibility to being a part of it!

 

The other key contributing factor to all of this is an invisible one- the
invisible attitude and frame of mind called fundamentalism, both the
pastor's and those who are cursing him.  Fundamentalism is an attitude
driven by the belief that a symbol is not just a symbol, it is more, it is
"real."  This is the failure to distinction map and territory.  The mental
map of ideas, feelings, and beliefs about something is confused and
over-identified with what's real -the territory.

 

Personally, I think it is a stupid idea to burn books and that stupidity is
having a field day in all of this.  Yet Jones has no monopoly on stupidity.
The curses against hm, the protests, the threats to kill him, and the
over-identification of him with "America" - all of that is just as stupid.
Ultimately, the pastor is just burning a book.  In response they burn the
American flag or the Bible.  Yet all of these things are just symbols.  And
that's all.

 

Even though I wish he wouldn't burn books, Jones certainly has the right to
burn any book or flag or anything else if it is his.  In a democracy that's
called freedom.  And in a democracy people have the right and responsibility
to live by their own values and beliefs.  That's why we don't allow
ourselves or others to become dictators of another's conscience.  Instead we
treat people as adults who are responsible for their own actions.

 

Here's the craziness in the current conflict: Every Moslem who gets stirred
up, provoked, and reactive to Jones is actually letting Jones control them!
By dis-empowering themselves over the symbolism, they are empowering him to
push their buttons.  Confusing map and territory, and getting serious about
this, they are endowing Jones with a whole lot of power, authority, and
influence.  And that's the problem from that side: they are taking him
serious.  They are giving to this unknown person his 15 minutes of fame and
they are making him more important than I think he deserves!

 

My recommendation: ignore him.  Don't let him push your buttons.  Set higher
frames in your mind to his provocative actions.  As long as you respond at
his level - pushing back and trying to make him stop or calling him names or
insulting him, you are coming down to his level and letting him win!  When
you unplug your buttons and view it as a silly choice on his part, you make
him and his actions less import ant, and redundant.

 

The Korean, the Bible, the Torah and every other religious book is just
that- a book, a symbol.  It is just writing about spiritual issues- and so
is a map, not the territory, not reality.

 

 

 

 

 

 




 

 

L.  Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Executive Director, International Society of Neuro-Semantics

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO.  81520 USA

1 970-523-7877

      <http://www.neurosemantics.com/> www.neurosemantics.com 

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://eight.pairlist.net/pipermail/neurons/attachments/20100911/b51df8b4/attachment.html>